Announcing my Ahnentafel to GEDCOM converter

Thanks to the crowd funding and testing support of the DNAadoption community I was able to write a new tool. Now it’s ready, it’s free, and it’s online, which means it works for Mac users too. You upload a text file in ahnentafel format and it creates a GEDcom file for you to download (or cut and paste). It was written to convert the DNArboretum output but with some massaging can take any ahnentafel text file, I hope.

It came to me after reading this that what I really love doing is writing tools for genealogy and DNA. So I thought I would try a simple crowd funding approach via my blog. It worked beautifully!

Many of you like my mapping tools. Let me know if there are other tools you want created.

This does not mean that I will stop writing these blog posts or taking genetic genealogy clients or speaking at conferences. I like those things too. Particularly the blogging. Sharing my passion makes me very happy.

So come and hear my talk on Triangulation at Rootstech! Friday at 4:30.

32 thoughts on “Announcing my Ahnentafel to GEDCOM converter”

All the best to you for your endeavours and I look forward to seeing more of them. A modest contribution for these via PayPal I wouldn’t think was asking too much from your many fans. Or make it pay-what-you-think-it-is-worth.

Well thanks Rosemary for the thumbs up,
I crowdfunded it in advance because I knew it would take several days out of my paid work schedule (I get obsessive about something like this) so I wanted to see if people really wanted to have if first by asking for donations up front.

Main Record: 0 @F1016@ FAM
Sub Section: Child Record not found: @I508@ (The program that produced this GEDCOM file is at fault.)
* Unrecog. Line for a Family Record: 1 CHIL @I508@
Placed in Marriage Note – Barbara MILCH : 1 CHIL @I508@. (In the GEDCOM file [D:\Temp\Gregory_Vaughn_BEAL1623.ged] there was a CHILD record referenced for this family but the child record could not be found in the file.)
_FREL Natural
_MREL Natural
—————————————-

Jay, Usually when there is an error with the GEDCOM produced by my tool there was something in the input ahnentafel that it misinterpreted. So please send the text file you used to kitty at this website without the blog. in the front so I can figure out the issue

Kitty, Did not get an e-mail notice of your reply. Old memory, and temp file cleanout, so do not have the file. Will try another one. Tried, and no records imported. Sent you an e-mail with attachments, hope they help fix the problem.

The converter can deal with missing (private) parents but not missing (private) grandparents yet. I will add that ability later this week. Meanwhile insert the line:
4. private PERKINS
before line 5 and it will work fine

There is a bug that will be fixed soon if the grandparents are missing in the ahnetafel (because they are private)

So please check that the names for 4,5,6,7 are there whenever names for double those numbers is there. If needed ones are missing, use a text editor to insert a line for that number with the word private or living and optionally the surname

Is there anyway that all of my research using Genealogy On Display, which is in the Basic programming language can be converted into a GED file? I have the information in both the compiled and noncompiled versions. I have about 800 people in the program so years ago I started to input the information into a more current program, but finally gave up, so nothing has been done since. I have not found any program to do the conversion so after I found your information using Google I thought I would see if you have the ability or any suggestion
Thanks in advance for any reply you can give.

Thanks much for providing this very useful utility! I have encountered a problem that you might want to look at. When I import converted files into Gramps, the surname goes into the ‘Given’ name field. It appears that Gramps expects the surname to have both leading and trailing slashes. When I use your checkbox option, I get output with a leading slash only. If I manually go into the file and add a trailing slash to each surname, it imports correctly.
Perhaps you might consider adding an option to provide both the leading and trailing slash.

Liz –
All files generated by my program are saved to a temporary folder which is automatically cleaned out every night. They can’t be deleted right away because then you could not download them.
Thank you for the reminder, i just made sure the contents of that folder could not be viewed from the internet.
It had not occurred to me to share them elsewhere. I think I would need permission to do that so no, not doing that or planning to. Google me if you do not trust me. What more can I say?

I have problems to convert files created with DNArboretum to gedcom when the textfile have the Swedish letters Å, Ä and Ö.
I have tried to save the textfiles both with ANSI, Unicode and UTF-8 format, but the resulting Gedcom is either missing persons or are not created att all, not until I replace all Å to A, Ä to A and Ö to O the gedcom is comple, but then when i use tools to match the created gedcom with my own gedcom (that is having names and places with swedish letters) the tools will not match those names.
Is there any chanse that you can fix that in the future?

Anders,
Sorry for your problems but it is not my program but probably your genealogy software.
When I look at the GEDcom for my many Norwegian ahnentafel conversions in the text editor I use for HTML editing (HTML-kit) I can see that the GEDcom has the foreign characters just fine. But when I import them they get lost.
I think you need to set your genealogy program to expect these characters. Or perhaps to change CHAR at the beginning. I will run a few experiments and get back to you

I think you missunderstand me..
I’m trying to convert textfiles created with DNArboretum from trees on FTDNA to gedcom with your tool Ahnentafel to GEDCOM, how can it be problem with my genealogy software when I in these steps don’t use my Genalogy software?

The problem is that the file is named for the first person in the Ahnentafel list and when that person starts with a swedish character the file system on the server is unhappy. When I changed the initial Å to A all worked fine.

Russell this is not needed. To get someone’s ancestry tree as a GEDcom first use the pedigree thief chrome add on which gies you the ahnentafel for a pedigree. Then run that ahenetafel list through my program.

I’ve tried converting with Pedigree Thief files from Ancestry, and the Gedcom produced does not hold as many persons as the tool says processed.
I’m not sure what’s going on, if it is on my end or the tool.